Three Poems by Jonathan Beale

We Walked Along the Embankment at 14:35 in the Rain After a Night Out in the West End

There is a collection
Of whispers
Beneath the iron
Bridges under every
Doorway.  Beneath

The silken image
Of what was to come.
As necessary as the air
We breathed, or the films
We saw or even the books we read

We walked on jumped--
The night bus
Into the heartless carcass
Of the night.
Until the sun rose and broke the spell.



The Cemetery of Unlived Lives

Passing by these staid walls,
of the cemetery of unlived lives.
Here the wailing bounds over
filling the days left unfulfilled.

Over that far crumbled wall
lays the root of the days of every
lost dream.  Those unfulfilled
vessels--lay dark, hollow, and

spent as the echo's remind the consciences
of the "what could have been" and the
"what ifs, what ifs, if & only ifs," words
drowned out--in the lost days.

In this place of now; the nominal rents,
where all investments have run dry.
Ideas from then are still around
in their idols, jokes, and poetic madness.

Their engines have spent their days.
On waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow
pausing no longer, as the voices of the
now ignored.  As the rest walk into tomorrow.



On the Edge of Things

     -- after Edge of a Wheatfield with Poppies, Vincent Van Gogh, 1887

As we sit on the edge of things--the ground consumes us
And then casts us back, and back, and back again.
Or at least me--
The thick, thick wheat swamps us--we drown
from below--drawn down and down.
Histories grow--and cannot cure.
The seed that should produce the perfect fruit
leaves just imperfections.

The trees offer some solace
a shore from the seas of morning coffee cup.
We never go to drink the evening wine.